Summary
We are looking for other like-minded, committed, hard working, energetic people to share our land and way of life with. We are hoping that by sharing our knowledge and skills, as well as our land, we will create a healthy, vibrant homesteading community. A collaborative, long-term arrangement is a possibility for the right person or family. Ultimately, we would like to see a land succession model that allows us to age in place on our homestead while providing an opportunity for new people interested in this type of lifestyle to access land more affordably.
About the Opportunity
Our goals:
We have retired and hope to live the remainder of our lives on our land while seeing the homestead develop with a successional plan in place. We feel that this property has the potential to support more than one family, and we would be happy to share our way of life with other like-minded, committed, hard working, energetic people. We are hoping that by sharing our knowledge and skills, as well as our land, we will create a healthy, vibrant homesteading community and provide an opportunity for new people interested in this type of lifestyle to access land more affordably. If you want more information about us, please go to our blog at Storytelling – The adventure goes on ….
In our current environment of unpredictable weather and rising costs of living, we are working towards developing a resilient, sustainable, subsidence homestead. Currently, we generate more than 80% of our own electricity using solar and picohydro systems and grow/forage approximately 60% of our own food. Our young orchard, once it reaches production, will further increase the amount of food we can harvest from the property. Adding small livestock (chickens, sheep, goats, pigs, rabbits) would bring our food sustainability close to 100%. We have lived on the property for 10 years, and during the floods, droughts, and COVID pandemic which have devastated British Columbia, we have been amazingly sheltered.
Our main reasons for seeking additional participants in our homesteading endeavor are companionship, development of a small “community” with enhanced self-reliance, safety, and livestock care when we must be away from the property. This is not a job offering or a money-making opportunity. This is a chance for the adventurous-at-heart to engage in an incredible nature-oriented, healthy, and fulfilling lifestyle.
We seek to manage the land for long-term sustainability, based on permaculture principles (see Permaculture Design Project for Port Neville) and other ecologically sound practices. We do not practice unsustainable harvesting of the land, and approximately 80% of the property is being retained as a wildlife habitat.
Benefits and drawbacks of the opportunity:

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- Pros:
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- Nature! Wilderness! Peace and quiet! More freedom in personal choices and lifestyle opportunities than you would get in the city.
- Resilience! When other places have been without power, sitting in the dark and cold, we have been warm and happy in our little cabin.
- We live in a “sweet spot” with respect to climate change, and although we have experienced a little of the crazy weather that has swept the globe in the last few years, we have been very protected from most of it.
- We own the property outright. There is no mortgage … we only pay taxes. We have no need to charge outrageous rentals and are open to alternate possibilities …
- We have found that after the initial capital costs of setting up our cabin and infrastructure, our annual living costs decreased significantly in comparison to an urban lifestyle.
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- Cons:
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- We are offering raw land only. Except for the small piece we have cleared for our cabin, garden, and orchard (see the above photo), the entire property is forested. You would need to establish your own living space (small or large) and infrastructure. However, we have gathered a great deal of knowledge and skills over our years here, and can provide significant assistance to someone starting out.
- Did I mention remote? We are 16 miles by boat from Sayward on Vancouver Island … about 40 minutes in a fast boat or 2+ hours in a slow one. In emergency situations, Coast Guard can get to the site by helicopter from Campbell River in roughly 20 minutes.
- We are only interested in someone who can live on-site full-time. We are not a storage location for someone’s recreational vehicles and boats.
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- Pros:
Income generation in Port Neville Inlet:
Income generation in Port Neville Inlet is largely limited to very seasonal and site specific forestry, and a bit of commercial fishing. It is possible to take a job in an urban center, such as Sayward or Campbell River. Unfortunately, that would not leave much time for working on the homestead. However, there are a few possibilities that would be a good fit for our concept of a sustainable homesteading community, such as:
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- doing creative work from home (e.g., writing, painting,
carving, webpage designing, computer programming, etc.). - developing a career that allows you to work from home (e.g., book-keeping, insurance agent, real estate agent, etc.). Since COVID, a number of work places are allowing their employees to work from home.
- harvesting and processing high value products from the land. We do not recommend trying to grow perishable produce, as we are too far from markets. However, products with long shelf-lives and which do not require refrigeration or freezing would be viable. Note that we have not done a market analysis on any of these concepts, and that would need to be done before embarking on them. Some examples are:
- enhancement and wild harvest of non-timber forestry resources such as berries (e.g., blueberries), edible mushrooms (e.g., shitake, oyster, chicken of the woods), and medicinal plants (e.g., turkey’s tails, elderflower, etc.).
- planting, growing, and harvesting nuts as a component of the food forest.
- planting, growing, harvesting, and processing (e.g., drying or producing jams and jellies) fruit as a component of the food forest.
- growing permaculture plants for sale from seeds/cuttings.
- doing creative work from home (e.g., writing, painting,
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The process:
It can take time to find a team that works and lives well together. To assess our compatibility with people who are potentially interested in this opportunity, we will go through a period of “getting to know each other”. We suggest the following progression:
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- Contact us by email or phone (see bottom of page). Ask lots of questions. We will answer as many as we can. Try to get a feel for the opportunity and whether or not it is right for you. If you live reasonably close, we may arrange a “meet-up” on Vancouver Island.
- Still interested? Come and visit us for a couple days. Get a good look at the site and what we have done with it so far. Familiarize yourself with the region and what it has to offer.
- Want to try it out for a little while? We can arrange a license with you that would allow you to stay on our property for a season or two in a temporary dwelling (see A Guide to Farmland Access Agreements, Section 4.o and Appendix A). This would let you get the feel of living on an off-grid, remote homestead.
- Still liking it? Thinking that this is the life for you? If it is working out for us as well, our next step would be to offer you a short term lease (maximum of 3 years; see the Young Agrarians B.C. Land Access Guide, Overview of Farmland Access Agreements; see A Guide to Farmland Access Agreements, Section 2.o and Appendix A) for a portion of the property. You would then be able to build structures, plant gardens, and care-take livestock for yourself.
- You wanna be a lifer! We arrange a profit à prendre between us and register it on the title of the land. You would now be permanently dwelling on the land, and your rights and access to the land would remain whether we continued as the owners or the land was sold.
- And in the end … if the land sharing arrangement was working well and we felt that we could securely age in place on our land without selling it, we could arrange that the land succession would fall to you via our will.

About the Land
Location:
Port Neville Inlet, British Columbia (northward and across the Johnstone Strait from Sayward on Vancouver Island)

Land size:
The total size of the property is 49.62 acres. Approximately 40 acres is forested with alder, with the remaining 10 acres consisting of old farmland, once cleared, but mostly in bush now.
Land description:
The land is gently sloping, south-facing with ocean frontage. The soil is well-drained sandy-loam with clay, and can be quite rocky in some places. The general soil fertility is modest, but can be greatly enhanced by the application of compost and manure.
Water sources:
The property has three seasonal creeks. We use a combination of rain water harvesting and storage tanks for water during the summer when the creeks run dry, but a well could probably be successfully dug. The water has not been tested for potability, and we boil all water used for human consumption.
Zoning:
The property is zoned RU-3 in the Discovery Islands-Mainland Inlets (Electoral Area ‘C’) area of the Strathcona Regional District.
The following uses are permitted within this zone:
- silviculture
- construction of a single family dwelling with one guest dwelling to a maximum floor area of 80 square metres
- construction of accessory buildings and structures to a maximum coverage of 1% of the lot
- use of land, buildings and structures for a home industry, a home sawmill or shakemill, and/or agricultural purposes
The land is not subdividable.
Historical land use:
The property is an old homestead dating back to 1927; however, there are no remaining buildings on the property from this time. The forest has been logged twice – initially hand logged during or before the establishment of the homestead, and then clear-cut in 1998.
Current state of the land:
Approximately one-third of the original cultivated land has been cleared and re-homesteaded with a small cabin, vegetable gardens, fruit bushes, and a young orchard. This area is protected from wildlife predation by an electric fence. The remainder of the cultivatable land is in bush. The forest is self-regenerating, and has nice stands of mature alder, along with a good understory of hemlock, cedar, spruce, and some Douglas fir.
Current land practices:
The land is being managed for long-term sustainability, based on permaculture principles (see Permaculture Design Project for Port Neville) and other ecologically sound practices.
Long term vision for the land:
To develop a self-sustaining homestead which could support two families. This could include wild harvest of non-timber forestry resources, development of a food forest, orcharding, vegetable gardening, and small scale livestock husbandry.
Agronomic potential:
Limited – this is primarily a sustainable homesteading opportunity, a lifestyle choice rather than a possibility for significant economic gains.
Access:
There is no road access to the property. We are 16 miles by water from Sayward (approximately two hours by a boat travelling at 7 knots), and can only be reached by boat or float plane.
Services:
The property is completely off-grid. Electricity is generated by solar panel, picohydro, and generator. We do, however, have cell phone and internet service.
Current residents living on property:
We live full-time on the property in a small cabin which we built by hand when we moved out to the land. It is our intent to continue living on the property for the remainder of our lives, if possible.
Availability of other buildings on property:
Currently, there are no other buildings available on the property. Short term arrangements can be made for living onsite in a tent, yurt, RV, or construction of a small cabin. Long-term arrangements, should the situation prove workable for everyone involved, might involve the construction of a second dwelling on the property.

Qualifications
The ideal person or family would be:
- healthy, adventurous, energetic, committed
- looking for a rural, off-grid, homestead environment for reasons of lifestyle rather than economics
- interested in sustainable living and farming according to permaculture principles
- able to support themselves financially in a rural setting (e.g., as writers, computer programmers, web designers, artists, consultants, etc.)
- of good character
- willing to work hard for the first few years to establish themselves on site
Families with children would be welcome. I am a scientist, teacher, and writer, and would be happy to provide assistance with home schooling.
Contact
If this sounds like a good fit for your aspirations, please contact the owners, Barb Faggetter and Kennard Hall:
- by phone at (250) 622-4128 (cell)
- by email at blueseas@oceanecology.ca

Change Makers Education Society has a free four bedroom house in M’akola. I have begun an indigenous media production company with Salmonberry friends. You are both an inspiration. Regards Jo Scott
Hey, its great to hear from you!! I’m glad to see that Salmonberry has given impetus to more and greater projects! Good health and good luck!
Cheers,
Barb